IAHF List: Rob Verkerk of the Alliance for Natural Health comes back from Ireland tomorrow and we'll have a better idea then where we all stand as far as the finances for the lawsuit go to overturn the EU Food Supplement Directive which has such huge global ramifications http://www.iahf.com/anh_lawsuit.html

Rob has been doing a lot of public speaking to impassioned crowds in Ireland and I'm cautiously optimistic because I know what a powerful public speaker he is. Lets keep our fingers crossed that we get this lawsuit filed by the deadline. If you haven't yet donated, or can donate some more, or know people who haven't yet donated- donations can be made over a secure server at http://www.alliance-natural-health.org
---------

While we all wait to see where things stand, I wanted to share this excellent interview of Gore Vidal with you because it provides significant food for thought on where we all stand in this very turbulent era we're living in. Regardless of what country you live in, I think you will find this interesting.

This interview aired on Australian TV on the Dateline program recently. Whether or not you share Vidal's views, I think you will agree if you take the time to read this that he has an expansive mind, and very eloquent way of speaking. What do you all think after reading this?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, even though I'd love to have a 3 hour argument with this man about his misplaced adoration of the scam known as the US Constitution- he needs to come to grips with the awful reality of Article 4 of the Defininitive Treaty of Peace of 1789 and also the Jay Treaty and he needs to fully grasp their implications- seeing past and current events through the lens of how the evil of Freemasonry entered into the equation- that would help him to see a bigger picture than what he is presenting here, but this is still very much worth taking the time to read. I admire this guy's mind, and would enjoy meeting him some day.

ratitor's note: The following has been edited to remove the embolalia [embolalia (m-bo-la'li-ya) n. the use of virtually meaningless filler words, phrases, or stammerings in speech, whether as unconscious utterings while arranging one's thoughts or as a vacuous inexpressive mannerism] and minimally clean-up grammatical syntax to enhance readability. Responsibility for footnote annotations rests entirely with me.
The following is mirrored from its source at: http://www.counterpunch.org/vidal03142003.html

The Erosion of the American Dream
It's Time to Take Action Against Our Wars on the Rest of the World
Interview with Gore Vidal
12 March 2003
Dateline, SBS TV, Australia

This is a transcript of Gore Vidals's March 12 interview on Dateline, SBS TV, Australia.

Mark Davis:
Gore Vidal, welcome to Dateline.

Gore Vidal:
Happy to have crossed the dateline down under.

Mark Davis:
In the past few years, you have shifted from being a novelist to principally an essayist or, in your own words `a pamphleteer'. It's almost the reverse of most writers' careers. Why the shift for you?

Gore Vidal:
Why the shift in the United States of America, which has obliged me -- since I've spent most of my life marinated in the history of my country and I'm so alarmed by what is happening with our global empire, and our wars against the rest of the world -- it is time for me to take political action. I think anybody who has the position, has a platform, must do so. It's also a family tradition. My grandfather lost his seat in the Senate because he opposed going into the First World War. And he won it back 10 years later on exactly the same set of speeches that he'd lost it. So attitudes change. Attitudes can be changed. But now I am not terribly optimistic that there is much anyone can do now the machine is set to go.

To have a major economic depression going on, collapse all round the world, and begin a war against an enemy that has done nothing against us other than what our media occasionally alleges, this is lunacy. I have a hunch -- I've been getting quite a bit around the country -- most people are beginning to sense it. The poll numbers are not as good as the Bush regime would have us believe. A great . . . something like 70% really only wants to go into war with United Nations sanction and a new resolution. I would prefer, however, that we use our Constitution [1], which we often ignore. Article 1, Section 8 says only the Congress may declare war. ["The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War"] The President has no right to go to war and he is Commander-in-Chief once it starts.

Mark Davis:
Over the past 40 years or so, you've written about the undermining of the foundations of the constitution -- liberty, human rights, free speech. Indeed, you've probably damned every administration throughout that period on that score. Is George Bush really any worse?

Gore Vidal:
No, he certainly is worse. We've never had a kind of reckless one who may believe -- and there's a whole theory now that he's inspired by love of Our Lord -- that he is an apocalyptic Christian who'll be going to Heaven while the rest of us go to blazes. I hope that isn't the case. I hope that's exaggeration.

The problem began when we got the empire, which was brilliantly done, in the most Machiavellian -- and I mean that in the best sense of the word -- way by Franklin Roosevelt. With the winning of World War II, we were everywhere on Earth. Our troops and our economy was number one. Europe was ruined. And from that, then in 1950, the great problem began when Harry Truman decided to militarize the economy, maintain a vast military establishment in every corner of the Earth. Meanwhile, denying money to schools but really to the infrastructure of the nation.

So we have been at war steadily since 1950. One of my little pamphlets was A Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. [2] How that worked, I mean, we've gone everywhere. we have the Enemy of the Month Club. One month, it's Noriega, king of drugs. Another [month], it's Gaddafi. We hated his eyeliner or something and killed his daughter. We moved from one enemy to another and the press, the media, has never been more disgusting.

I don't know why, but there are very few voices that are speaking out publicly. The censorship here is so tight in all of the newspapers and particularly in network television. So nobody's getting the facts. I spend part of the year in Italy. Basically, what I find out I find out from European journalists who actually will go to Iraq, which our people cannot do or will not do, and are certainly not admired for doing so. We are in a kind of bubble of ignorance about what is really going on. [3]

Mark Davis:
Is the pamphlet the only viable option for voices of dissent at the moment?

Gore Vidal:
It's a weapon. I suppose one could -- Khomeini had a wonderful idea, which made him the lord of all Iran. When the Shah was on his way out, Khomeini flooded Iran with audio recordings of his voice, very cheaply made in Paris. And they were listened to by everybody in Iran. It's too late for that sort of thing for us. There are ways of getting around official media and there are ways of getting around a government which is given to lying about everything. And the people eventually pick up on it. But things are moving so swiftly now.

Mark Davis:
You charge what you call the `Cheney-Bush junta' with empire-building. But hasn't America always been an empire and isn't this junta just a little bit more honest about it? They aren't shy in proclaiming their belief that America has something worth exporting.

Gore Vidal:
I prefer hypocrisy to honesty any time if hypocrisy will keep the peace. No, we have had an imperial streak from the very beginning. But it didn't get going until 1898 when we picked a war with Spain because we had our eye on Spanish colonial possessions. Specifically the Philippines which got us into your part of the world -- into Asia. From that moment on, we really were a global empire. Then by the time of the Second World War, we'd achieved it. It was all ours.

No, what is going on now is kind of interesting. We've never seen anything like it. There's a group of what they call neo-conservatives. Most of them were old Stalinists and then they were Trotskyites and then, finally, they are neo-conservatives now. They preach openly and they're all over the war department (as we used to call it, the Defence Department). Mr Wolfowitz is one of their brains and they write really extraordinarily frightening overviews of the United States and the rest of the world. That we, after all, have all the military power that there is and let's use it. Let's take the Earth. It's there for us. [4]

They're talking glibly now about after they get rid of Saddam -- which they think is going to be a very easy thing to do -- Iran is next. One of them, not long ago, made a public statement, "It's time we really had regime change in ALL the Arab countries." There are 1 billion Muslims and I don't see them taking this very well. And if a smallish place like wherever it was ultimately can produce so many suicide bombers, 1 billion Muslims can take out the whole United States or western Europe.

I would always opt for peace, as war is always a mess. But I was in a war which the junta, Mr Bush and Mr Cheney, did everything possible to avoid being involved in -- Vietnam. [5] Cheney when asked, as he became vice-president, they said, "Well, why didn't you serve your country at the time of Vietnam?" and he said, "Well, I had other priorities." I'll say he did. Those of us who . . . we are the one group, the World War II veterans, we are a shrinking group obviously, but we are the ones that are the most solidly against the war.

The people who stayed out of Vietnam, the rest who have never known war, are just gung-ho for other people to go fight. They themselves don't do it. But there is a split here between those who've had a bit of experience of the world and of war and the others who are mostly interested, certainly the junta, as I call them, in Washington, they're all in the gas and oil business.

People ask me, "Are you saying there's a conspiracy?" Because that's the word where everybody starts laughing. It means you believe in flying saucers. "No," I said, "I'm going to change the world." We won't say it's a conspiracy that all the great offices of state are occupied by gas and oil people -- the President, the Vice-President, National Security Adviser -- it's not a coincidence. "It's a coincidence," and everybody smiles. That's a nice word. "Oh, yes, of course, it's a coincidence" that they are running the government and getting us into a war in oil-rich places." [6]

Mark Davis:
Bush has claimed that the American belief in liberty will deliver a free and peaceful Iraq. Even with the stench of oil in the air, George Bush probably can deliver that -- a free and peaceful Iraq that is. Isn't there a legitimate case to be argued that there's a greater good at work here?

Gore Vidal:
There is no greater good at work. We cannot deliver it. Only the Iraqis can deliver that. You don't go in and smash up a country, which we will do, and gain their love so that they then want to imitate our highly corrupt political system. On the subject of democracy -- I happen to be something of a student of the American Constitution -- it was set up in order to avoid majority rule.

The two things the founding fathers hated were majoritarian rule and monarchy. So they devised a republic in which only a very few white men of property could vote. Then, to make sure that we never had any democracy at work at the highest levels of governance, they created something called the electoral college, which can break any change that might upset them.

We saw what happened in November 2000. When Albert Gore won the popular vote by 600,000, he actually won the electoral vote of Florida. But a lot of dismal things happened and denied him the election. [7] So that's what happened there. For us to talk about a democracy that we are going to translate into other lands is the height of hypocrisy and is simply foolish. We don't invent governments for other people.

Mark Davis:
The American virtues of individual liberties, although viewed by many people with some cynicism, are still meaningful to people around the world. It's interesting to note the support that America is getting from the former eastern bloc European nations, Rumsfeld's "new Europe". The American message still resonates with them, doesn't it?

Gore Vidal:
They're not clued in to what sort of country the United States is. They've certainly found out what kind of country the Soviet Union was and they didn't like that one bit. And they associate us with their relative liberation. That's all. What we're really about they don't know. They believe the propaganda. They believe the media, which is constantly going on about democracy and freedom and liberty and the greatest country on earth and so on and the only thing wrong in the world is there are EVIL people who hate us because we are SO good.

I don't know how anybody can buy this line, but people do. People are not very well informed. The well-informed countries -- western Europe -- know perfectly well what our game is. General de Gaulle took France out of NATO because he suspected that we were in the empire-building business, and he didn't want to go along with it. Yet, simultaneously, France remained an ally in case there was a major war with the Soviets. I don't think we should take too seriously those eastern European countries. In due course, they will wake up, as Turkey did, that we are dangerous.

Mark Davis:
Unlike Iraq, indeed any members of the `axis of evil', Americans can change their government with some drawbacks. They can express their opinions. On the eve of a war, whatever Machiavellian benefits might accrue to the US, isn't there still moral weight in the voice of America, given its history as a democratic force over the past century?

Gore Vidal:
I spoke to 100,000 people two weeks ago in Hollywood Boulevard, down the hill from where I'm speaking to you now. There were 100,000, lots of police, many helicopters overhead which, as the speaker got up, would lower themselves to try and drown your voice out. The press did not record that there were 100,000 people. They said, "Oh, 30,000 perhaps. That might be an exaggeration," they said. Unfortunately for them, the Los Angeles Times, generally a fairly good paper, had a long shot from La Brea where I was speaking on a stage straight up to Vine Street, which was a mile or two away, and you saw 100,000 people, so their very picture undid them.

What I'm saying is the censorship is very tight. Don't think we're a free country to say anything we want. We can say it, but it's not going to be printed and you're not going to get on television. One of our great voices for some time now for peace in the world is Noam Chomsky. I've never seen his name in the New York Times in any context other than linguistics of which he's a professor at MIT. We go totally unnoticed.

I can do a pamphlet and it's the Internet that gets it to people. So I can sell a couple of hundred thousand copies of a pamphlet. No word of it will appear in the New York Times. To my amazement this time, they actually put it on their bestseller list. Generally, they won't do that.

I can't tell you how tightly controlled this place is and it's beginning to show, because talk radio and so on -- I've done a lot of that lately -- the questions you get, the people are so confused. They don't know where Iraq is.

They think Saddam Hussein, because he's an evil person, deliberately blew up the twin towers in Manhattan. He didn't. That was Osama bin Laden or somebody else. We still don't know because there has been no investigation of that, as Congress and the Constitution require. [8] So we are totally in the dark and we have a president who is even in a greater darkness, who's totally uninformed about the world, leading us into war because, because because.

Mark Davis:
The defense of American civil liberties has been a consistent theme of yours, most vocally in recent months, in response to the Patriot Act and the new Homeland Defence Agency. But it would seem that Americans don't share your views in any significant numbers. Why not?

Gore Vidal:
They do. What I do is quite popular. Now, mind you, we're not much of a reading country, but we certainly watch a lot of television. You can pick up a tremendous audience across -- you know, millions of people have been marching. If you read the American press . . .

Mark Davis:
And yet there's been very little political response to the establishment of those agencies or the very dramatic constitutional changes that have been made in the Patriot Act. [9] We're not really hearing a strong movement, not from the Democrats, not in the media. There is a certain acquiescence.

Gore Vidal:
We don't hear it because they're part of it. We have elections -- very expensive ones and very corrupt ones. But we don't have politics. We made a trade-off somewhere. This was after Harry Truman established the national security state, and suddenly television came along and elections cost billions.

It cost $3 billion to elect Bush. That's a lot of money. And it was a campaign almost without issues except personalities. Nothing was talked about. Nothing was talked about going to war as quickly as possible, which of course obviously was in his mind. So you have a country that is not political, without political parties. There are movements of people, which go largely unrecorded. There are eloquent voices out there, but you don't see them in print, you don't hear them on the air.

Mark Davis:
One of those voices is one of your contemporaries, Norman Mailer. He wrote recently [10] that, after a long life, he's concluded that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state and that America as a nation is in a pre-fascist era, a mega banana republic increasingly dominated by the military. Is it a view that you share?

Gore Vidal:
I have those days, yes, such as Norman is having. But I am more deeply rooted in the old Constitution [1] with all of its flaws and in the Bill of Rights [11] with all of its virtues. That was something special on Earth and Jefferson was something special on Earth when he said that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- nobody had ever used that phrase in the Constitution before or set that out as a political goal for everyone.

Out of that came the energies of the United States to have made it the number one country in the world and the most inventive and the most creative. And then the Devil entered Eden and we ended up with an Asiatic empire, and a European empire, and a South American dependency and we are not what we were.

The people get no education. I call it `the United States of Amnesia'. I've written now, is it 12 books I think, doing American history from the Revolution up to the Millennium. They're very popular because they don't get it in school and they don't get it from the media.

So people do read my books. But there should be more by other people too. It is a terrible thing to lose your past, particularly when you had such an interesting one, as we did. In the 18th century, we had three of the great geniuses of the 18th century all living in this little colonial world of 3 million people. We had Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. These were extraordinarily wise men and understood the ways of the world, and they gave us a very good form of government.

No, it was not a liberal government. It was a very reactionary one. But it was the 18th century -- 1787 was when the Constitution was written. It was as advanced as the human race had ever got at that time in devising a republic. To have lost that and to have lost all memory of it -- we've been having a big argument about [how] we've got "In God we trust" on the money. Well this is over the dead bodies of Thomas Jefferson and the other founders, most of whom did not believe in God and wanted to keep Church and State separate. Every American seems to think, "In God we trust" was put on the money by George Washington. Well, it was put on there by Dwight Eisenhower in trying to get some southern votes, Baptist preachers.

Mark Davis:
You're one of America's harshest cultural and political critics and yet you write and clearly talk very romantically about the republic. You've documented those ebbs and flows where you believe it's verged from its founding principles. In the broader sweep, what is the state of America today?

Gore Vidal:
Adrift, but adrift toward war, and it's a war that we can't win. I suppose we can blow up Baghdad. But I think, when that starts, if that happens, we can count on retaliation from 1 billion Muslims and who knows what other? We are opening up -- I don't know, a Pandora's box. It's as if we're opening a tomb and God knows what will come out of it.

This is dangerous country. This isn't just ordinary colonial aggression -- a European power that wants to take over Panama, something like that. This isn't it at all. First of all, they're proudly talking about a cultural and religious clash between Christianity and Devil's work. That's very dangerous and very stupid. And I don't know how you win that one.

Mark Davis:
There are definite echoes of the 1950s in America today. Some of the loudest critics of that shift are also products of that era: yourself, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller. Where are the young Vidals, the young Mailers, the young Millers? [12]

Gore Vidal:
One of the things that happened (although we don't have much of an educational system for the general public) the writers of the Second War, all except a few like the three that you've just named, went into the universities to teach. In a rather great speech when he left office, Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex, which he said was taking over too much of this nation's money and life.

A part of it is never quoted. He said, in effect, the universities and learning will be hurt the most because, because when places of learning and knowledge, investigation, are dependent upon government bounty, subsidies, for their very lives [13] . . . which we were doing; we were giving everything to the science department to develop weapons. That also went for the humanities, the history department too, the English department.

We have a whole generation of school teachers and they're not very good school teachers. Some of them are very talented writers, but they're quiet. They don't want to rock the boat. They want to keep their jobs. They saw in the '50s -- what happened if you got associated with radical movements. You lost your job and they weren't easy to find. Now, they're quiet as could be.

Mark Davis:
Is the '50s back, or are the 1950s back with us?

Gore Vidal:
Nothing repeats itself except human folly, so no. I do feel an energy across the country -- this may be because I go to energetic groups -- that are fighting their own government. But they're going to lose because the government is now totally militarized and ready for war, a war they can't really sell to the rest of the world, but they're going to do it anyway.

This is something new. We've never had a period like this. It was, to somebody like me, who is really hooked into constitutional America, this is incredible. We cannot trust the Supreme Court after their mysterious decisions on the election of 2000. [14]

We have no political parties. We've never had much of them, I mean the Democrats, the Republicans. We have one party. We have the party of essentially corporate America. It has two right wings, one called Democratic, one called Republican.

So in the absence of politics, with a media that is easy to manipulate and, in the hands of very few people with interests in wars and oil and so on, I don't see how you get the word out, but one tries because there is nothing else to be done.

Mark Davis:
Gore Vidal, thanks for joining us on Dateline.

Gore Vidal:
Thank you.

Gore Vidal is the author of three excellent pamphlets on 9/11 and Bush's wars: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and, most recently, Dreaming War. The opening essay of the latter is, The Enemy Within.

See a description of the book, A Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, at http://www.nationbooks.org/book.mhtml?t=vidal. See the November 2001 article, "Author Gore Vidal Slams U.S. for Waging `Perpetual War'", by Stephanie Holmes, Reuters, 11/24/01 (reprinted on CommonDreams).

Internal UN documents on the humanitarian impact of war on Iraq
Released by Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (CASI) / Emergency Campaign on Iraq - Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) on 13 February 2003.
CESR obtained these confidential documents from several UN personnel who believe that the potential humanitarian impact of war is a matter of global public concern that should be discussed fully and openly.
Source: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "Integrated Humanitarian Contingency Plan for Iraq and Neighbouring Countries", confidential draft, 7 January 2003.
Key Quotes:
"In the event of a crisis, 30 percent of children under 5 would be at risk of death from malnutrition" [p. 3(5)]
Note: * 30% of 4.2 million children under five [p. 3(5)] = 1.26 million children under five
"the collapse of essential services in Iraq ... could lead to a humanitarian emergency of proportions well beyond the capacity of UN agencies and other aid organizations" [p. 4(6)]
"all UN agencies have been facing severe funding constraints that are preventing them from reaching even minimum levels of preparedness" [p. 1(3)]
"the effects of over 12 years of sanctions, preceded by war, have considerably increased the vulnerability of the population". [p. 3(5)]
"WFP [world food programme] estimates that approximately 10 million people ... would be highly food insecure, displaced or directly affected by military action" [p. 11(13)]
"in the event of a crisis, only 39 percent of the population would be serviced [with water] on a rationed basis" [p. 12(14)]
"UNHCR estimates that up to 1.45 million refugees and asylum-seekers may seek to flee Iraq in the event of a military conflict" [p. 9(11)]
"Up to 900,000 people may be displaced in addition to the 900,000-1,100,000 existing IDPs [internally displaced persons]" [p. 10(12)]
[from tables on p. 12(14)]
5,210,000 are highly vulnerable children under five and pregnant and lactating women.
500,000 potential direct and indirect casualties (overall population).
3,020,000 at nutritional risk (overall population).
18,240,000 might need access to treated water.
8,710,000 may need sanitation facilities.

Marking the twelfth anniversary of sanctions on Iraq:
Iraq Sanctions: Humanitarian Implications and Options for the Future, 6 August 2002

Anglican Observer Office at the UN, Arab Commission for Human Rights, Center for Development of International Law, Center for Economic and Social Rights, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Global Policy Forum, New Internationalism Project, Institute for Policy Studies, Mennonite Central Committee, Middle East and Europe Office of Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Quaker UN Office-New York, United Church of Christ UN Office World Economy, Ecology and Development Association (WEED), in association with Save the Children UK

Could the Nazi holocaust have happened without anyone knowing about it?
The American Holocaust has.
For the detailed story -- a look at the Empire without clothes -- read
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
by William Blum (Common Courage Press, 1995, revised 2001)
Killing Hope contains 55 chapters spanning interventions throughout the world from 1945 to 1994 and three appendices, the third of which lists 40 U.S. government assassination plots of prominent foreign individuals since the end of WWII.
See Also by William Blum:
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Common Courage Press, 2000)
If you believed that the NATO (read U.S.) bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights in 1999 was a "humanitarian" act, Rogue State hopefully can serve as a wake-up call to both your intellect and your conscience. It is a mini-encyclopedia of the numerous un-humanitarian acts perpetrated by the United States since the end of the Second World War.
"Critics will call this a one-sided book. But it is an invaluable corrective to the establishment portrait of America as the world's greatest force for peace. Even confirmed opponents of U.S. interventionism can find much in this important book that will both educate and shock them."
--Peter Dale Scott, former Professor at UC Berkeley,
poet, and author, Deep Politics and The Death of JFK

Peter Dale Scott, former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at U.C. Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher. His new book, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (Rowman and Littlefield: March 2003),
"explores the underlying factors that have engendered a US strategy of indirect intervention in Third World countries through alliance with drug-trafficking proxies. This strategy was originally evolved in the late 1940s for the containment of Communist China; it has been resorted to since to secure control over foreign petroleum resources. The result has been a staggering increase in the global drug traffic and the mafias assorted with it, a problem that will worsen until there is a change in policy. The book traces also some of the processes by which some of these covert interventions have escalated into war, and how present strategies to support the US dollar have come to depend on US domination of the global oil economy."
From his website, also see analysis: On War, 9/11, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Drugs, Oil, Iraq, and Osama bin Laden

From Center for Cooperative Research:
The Complete 9/11 Timeline, by Paul Thompson
A network of extremely detailed and well-organized timelines beginning with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and running to the present. The timelines depict the chronologies of several different concurrent themes related to the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and the subsequent `war on terrorism' including the development of Central Asian oil, the anthrax attacks, preludes to war in Afghanistan, warnings of an imminent terrorist attack, and more. There is also a timeline that provides a very detailed account of the events of September 11 as well as separate timelines for each of the hijacked flights.
Mirrors: http://billstclair.com/911timeline/http://www.unansweredquestions.net/timeline/

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed:
The War on Freedom, How and Why America was Attacked September 11, 2001, July 2002. Complete 400-page PDF copy: http://globalfreepress.com/books/warfre-book.pdf
Report: The Impending Abyss :: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Past and Future Trajectory of the Israel-Palestine Conflict ::, 6/16/02
Oil Wars :: Western "Humanitarianism" in Iraq ::, 6/6/02
9/11 "Conspiracies" and the Defactualisation of Analysis
How Ideologues on the Left and Right Theorise Vacuously to Support Baseless Supposition :: A Reply to ZNet's `Conspiracy Theory?' Section ::, 6/28/02
Did Bush Know? :: Warning Signs of 9-11 and Intelligence Failures ::, 5/18/02
America in Terror :: September 11 and The War on Islam ::, 5/15/02
The Myth of Western Humanitarian Intervention Grim Lessons from the Killing in Kosovo, A Case Study :: Part One ::, 4/4/02
Why The Media Lies The Corporate Structure of The Mass Media, 3/11/02
State-Sponsored Terrorism in the Republic of India Communal Violence and the Institutionalization of Religious Discrimination, 3/10/02
Prisoners of War The abuse of Power and the Regression of Civilisation, 1/23/02
Globalization and the World Order The Institutionalization of Injustice, 12/24/01
Starving to Death, Waiting to be Killed The U.S. War on the Afghan People, 11/8/01
Bleeding The Gulf The United Nations Sanctions on Iraq, 10/30/01
Distortion, Deception, and Terrorism The Bombing of Afghanistan, 10/9/01
The 1991 Gulf Massacre: The Historical & Strategic Context of Western Terrorism in The Gulf, 10/2/01
American State Terrorism: A Critical Review of The Objectives of U.S. Foreign Policy in The Post-World War II Period, 9/24/01
America in Terror Causes and Context: The Foundational Principles of Western Foreign Policy and The Structure of World Order, 9/12/01

A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing
of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting,
by Professor Marc W. Herold, Ph.D., M.B.A., B.Sc.,
Departments of Economics and Women's Studies
McConnell Hall, Whittemore School of Business & Economics
University of New Hampshire, December 2001
Local copy in three formats of original paper on ratical.org

IRAQ BODY COUNT This is a Human Security project to establish an independent and comprehensive public database of civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies in 2003.

Bush Pushes the Big Lie Toward the Brink
Even some in government can no longer be silent in the face of falsehood
by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, 3/4/03

The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War in Iraq:
A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth,
by William Clark, 26 Jan 2003, last revised March 6th.

The Assassination of Martin Luther King was An Act of State
Transcript: William F. Pepper: An Act of State - The Execution of Martin Luther King
Talk at Modern Times Bookstore, San Francisco, 4 Feb 2003
Book Review: The Assassination of Martin Luther King was An Act of State,
by David Ratcliffe, 1/20/03
William Pepper on the MLK Conspiracy Trial, 7 April 2002
The Martin Luther King Conspiracy
Exposed in Memphis, by Jim Douglass, May 2000
Testimony of William Schaap, MLK Conspiracy Trial Transcript, 11/30/99
Transcription of the King Family Press Conference
on the MLK Assassination Trial Verdict, 9 December 1999, Atlanta, GA
Complete 1999 trial transcript (14 Volumes), November 15 thru December 8

Operation Northwoods
Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, 13 March 1962. Subject: Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba. 15-page PDF representation of original. HTML excerpts from the original 15-page TOP SECRET US government document.
Friendly Fire - Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba, by David Ruppe, ABCNEWS.com, 5/1/01
Excerpts from Body of Secrets by James Bamford (Random House: 2001)

United State's #1 market: Military Dictatorship: The Prague racket, Nato is now a device to exert control and extract cash. Those who resist, like Belarus, are punished, by John Laughland, The Guardian, 11/22/02

US firms set for postwar contracts, by Danny Penman and agencies, The Guardian, 3/11/03

Guide to anti-war websites, Guardian Unlimited, March 2003

About Face: The Role of the Arms Lobby In the Bush Administration's Radical Reversal of Two Decades of U.S. Nuclear Policy, by William D. Hartung, with Jonathan Reingold, World Policy Institute, May 2002

The following is represents a cross-section of the "Let's take the Earth" Club thinking:

The president's real goal in Iraq, by Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/29/02
PDF, 90 pages: Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, by Thomas Donnelly, co-chaired by Donald Kagan and Gary Schmitt, A Report of The Project for the New American Century, September 2000
Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate Over U.S. Role, by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 8/21/01
A declaration of war against the world, A 28-page answer to the question 'why do they hate us', by Geov Parrish, workingforchange.com, 9/26/02
A recipe for disaster by Doreen Miller, YellowTimes.org, 10/18/02
Mad ambitions: Why Bush's "National Security Strategy" is wrong, wrong, wrong by Ann Rose Thomas, Online Journal, 10/3/02
BajanMan: 'Rational response to roguery: A difference of forty years', The Smirking Chimp, 10/12/02
Bush Unveils Global Doctrine of First Strikes, by David E. Sanger, New York Times, 9/20/02
Full Text: TheNational Security Strategy of the United States, 9/20/02 (PDF Format)
Military Supremacy at Heart of Bush Strategy, by Roland Watson, Times/UK, 9/21/02
The day the empire struck back, by James Laxer, Toronto Globe and Mail, 9/24/02
Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century Report of an Independent Task Force Sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations, submitted to Cheney in April 2001. Argues that "the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma," with one of the "consequences" being a "need for military intervention" to secure its oil supply.
The West's battle for oil - Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq ... to secure control of its oil. Neil Mackay on the document which casts doubt on the hawks, The Sunday Herald, 10/5/02

See The Chickenhawk Database, courtesy of the New Hampshire Gazette

A chickenhawk is a term often applied to public persons -- generally male -- who (1) tend to advocate, or are fervent supporters of those who advocate, military solutions to political problems, and who have personally (2) declined to take advantage of a significant opportunity to serve in uniform during wartime. Some individuals may qualify more for their political associations than for any demonstrated personal tendency towards bellicosity. Some women may be included for exceptional bellicosity.

Sources indicating the United States planned war in Asia before 9/11 are numerous:

On War, 9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Drugs, Oil, and Osama Bin Laden, by Peter Dale Scott - wealth of research, numerous and detailed sources cited. See especially, 6. Afghanistan, Turkmenistan Oil and Gas, and the Projected Pipeline
by Paul Thompson - timelines with many sources:
US Preparing For a War With Afghanistan Before 9/11, Increasing Control of Asia Before and Since
Central Asian Oil, Enron, and the Afghanistan Pipelines
Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, by Jean-Charles Brisard & Guillaume Dasquie -- details US oil corporations influence on Bush admin's policies toward Taliban prior to 9/11
Before 9/11, the Bush Administration Curbed FBI Anti-Terrorism Efforts, Allegedly in Order to Advance Negotiations for a Government and Gas Pipeline in Afghanistan, Peter Dale Scott
The French Connection - Paris Reporters Say Bush Threatened War Last Summer, James Ridgeway, Village Voice, 2 January 2002
Quick take on Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth, John Emerson, Online Journal, 2/1/02
Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth About Bush, Oil and Washington's Secret Negotiations With The Taliban, Democracy NOW!, 10 January 2002
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors , by Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service, 11/15/01
Afghanistan, Bin Laden and Oil by Alice-Catherine Carls, The Center for Public Justice, 7/1/02
Oil company adviser named US representative to Afghanistan, by Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site, 1/3/02
Why Is There A War In Afghanistan? by John McMurtry Phd, FRSC, Opening Address, Science for Peace Forum and Teach-In, University of Toronto, 12/9/01
The Deadly Pipeline War - US Afghan Policy Driven By Oil Interest, by Marjorie Cohn, Jurist, The Legal Education Network, 12/7/01
The war in Afghanistan is a means to another end by Firoz Osman, The Mail & Guardian, 12/4/01
Afghanistan is Key to Oil Profits, by Karen Talbot, ICPJ, 11/7/01
Bibliography for the Study of Oil and War, compiled by George Draffan, Endgame Research Services, 11/01
America, oil and Afghanistan, by Sitaram Yechury, The Hindu, 10/13/01
US `planned attack on Taleban', by George Arney, BBC News, 9/18/01
Energy future rides on U.S. war - Conflict centered in world's oil patch, by Frank Viviano, San Francisco Chronicle, 9/26/01
Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before NY attack, by Jonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ed Harriman, The Guardian, 9/22/01
India and Iran will "facilitate" the planned US-Russia hostilities against the Taliban, Public Affairs Magazine - Newsinsight.net, 6/26/01
Reaping the Whirlwind - The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan, by Michael Griffin, Pluto Press, May 2001. Regarding the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Turkish Kurdistan and Chechnya: "each represented a distinct, tactical move, crucial at the time, in discerning which power would ultimately become master of the pipelines which, some time in this century, will transport the oil and gas from the Caspian basin to an energy-avid world." (p.115)
Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century Report of an Independent Task Force Sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations, 2001
The West's battle for oil - Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq ... to secure control of its oil. Neil Mackay on the document which casts doubt on the hawks, The Sunday Herald, 10/5/02
India joins anti-Taliban coalition, by Rahul Bedi, Jane's Intelligence Review, 3/15/01
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid, Yale University Press, March 2001, (Order the book)
1992-1999 Timeline of Competition between Unocal and Bridas for the Afghanistan Pipeline, from World Press Review's Special Report on Pipeline Politics
Countering the New Terrorism, by Ian O. Lesser, Bruce Hoffman, John Arquilla, David F. Ronfeldt, Michele Zanini, Brian Michael Jenkins, RAND corporation, 1999
Pipe Dreams - The Struggle for Caspian Oil (1998) - 3-part Washington Post series
Follow the Oil Trail - Mess in Afghanistan Partly Our Government's Fault, by William O. Beeman, Pacific News Service, 8/24/98
Testimony By John J. Maresca Vice President, International Relations Unocal Corporation To House Committee On International Relations Subcommittee On Asia And The Pacific, 2/12/98
The Grand Chessboard -- American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997
The New Pipeline Politics, by Sheila N. Heslin, New York Times, 11/10/97

See (in PDF format): Press Release: Conyers Releases First Fifty-State Survey of Election Irregularities, and Executive Summary (6 pages) and the full report: How To Make Over One Million Votes Disappear: Electoral Sleight Of Hand In The 2000 Presidential Election (122 pages), A Fifty-State Report Prepared for Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member, House Committee on the Judiciary, Dean, Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic Investigative Staff, House Committee on the Judiciary, August 20, 2001.
See also Bush v. Gore: A Resolution of Censure, The Supreme Court Five Censure Campaign, including A Draft Resolution of Congressional Censure Against United States Supreme Court Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas for Their Betrayal of the American People and the United States Constitution Displayed in the Decisions of Bush v. Gore (PDF format).

Where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are concerned, the record on who did what and who is doing what is not acknowledged in the commercial U.S. press. Two points need constant emphasis: (1) the "proof" that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 bombings was never publically established, and (2) bin Laden does not possess the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude and sophistication, which leaves open the question of 9/11 sponsorship.

Regarding proof of Osama bin Laden's culpability, international law professor Francis Boyle writes in his book, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence (Clarity Press:2002, pp.18-19):
"Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly promised that they were going to produce a `White Paper' documenting their case against Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization concerning September 11. . . . What happened here? We never received a "White Paper" produced by the Untied States government as publicly promised by Secretary Powell, who was later overridden by President Bush Jr. What we got instead was a so-called White Paper produced by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Obviously, Blair was acting as Bush Jr's surrogate . . . neither an elected or administrative official of the U.S. government, not even an American citizen. Conveniently, no American could be brought to task for or even questioned about whatever errors of inadequacies Blair might purvey.
"The Powell/Blair White Paper fell into that hallowed tradition of a "White Paper" based upon insinuation, allegation, rumors, propaganda, lies, half-truths, etc. Even unnamed British government officials on an off-the-record basis admitted that the case against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would not stand up in court. And as a matter of fact the Blair/Powell White Paper was widely derided in the British news media. There was nothing there."

[Note that the preamble to this white paper -- "Responsibility for the terrorist atrocities in the United States," 10/4/01 -- explicitly confirms Professor Boyle's assertion:
"This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Usama Bin Laden in a court of law. Intelligence often cannot be used evidentially, due both to the strict rules of admissibility and to the need to protect the safety of sources. But on the basis of all the information available HMG is confident of its conclusions as expressed in this document." http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/page3554.asp --ratitor]

The Cover-Ups

Despite the clear import of the matter, the U.S. Congress has decided not to empanel a Joint Committee of the House and of the Senate with subpoena power giving them access to whatever hard evidence they want throughout any agency of the United States government -- including the National Security Council, FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA -- and also to put their Officials under oath to testify as to what happened and why under penalty of perjury. Obviously a cover-up is underway for the express purpose of not determining (1) who was ultimately responsible for the terrible attacks of 11 September 2001; and (2) why these extravagantly funded U.S. "intelligence" agencies were either unable or unwilling to prevent these attacks despite numerous warnings of a serious anti-American attack throughout the Summer of 2001 -- and yet, amazingly, could assert the identity of those responsible with such certainty in the space of hours thereafter as to preclude any serious investigation of other possible perpetrators. And for reasons not necessary to get into here, there is also an ongoing governmental cover-up of the obvious involvement of the Pentagon/CIA, or one of their contractors, in the anthrax attack upon the American People and all three Branches of the U.S. Federal Government.

Regarding the sponsorship of 9/11, see:

Domestic Terrorism: The Big Lie - The "War" On Terrorism is a Total Fabrication
from Broadening Our Perspectives of 11 September 2001 by David Ratcliffe, Sept 2002

Cover-up or Complicity of the Bush Administration?,
The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI) in the September 11 Attacks,
by Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 11/2/01

". . . Corroborated by the House of Representatives International Relations Committee,US support funneled through the ISI [Pakistan's Military Intelligence] to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden has been a consistent policy of the US Administration since the end of the Cold War:
``. . . [T]he United States has been part and parcel to supporting the Taliban all along, and still is let me add . . . You have a military government [of President Musharraf] in Pakistan now that is arming the Taliban to the teeth. . . . Let me note; that [US] aid has always gone to Taliban areas . . . We have been supporting the Taliban, because all our aid goes to the Taliban areas. And when people from the outside try to put aid into areas not controlled by the Taliban, they are thwarted by our own State Department . . . At that same moment, Pakistan initiated a major resupply effort, which eventually saw the defeat, and caused the defeat, of almost all of the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan.'' (US House of Representatives: Statement by Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, Hearing of The House International Relations Committee on "Global Terrorism And South Asia", Washington, July 12, 2000.)

"The existence of an "ISI-Osama-Taliban axis" is a matter of public record. The links between the ISI and agencies of the US government including the CIA are also a matter of public record."

Political Deception--The Missing Link Behind 9-11, by Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 6/27/02

`FBI lapses' served to distract public attention from the broader issue of political deception. Not a word was mentioned concerning the role of the CIA, which throughout the entire post-Cold War era, has aided and abetted Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, as part of its covert operations.
Of course they knew! The foreknowledge issue is a red herring. The `Islamic Brigades' are a creation of the CIA. In standard CIA jargon, Al Qaeda is categorized as an `intelligence asset'. Support to terrorist organizations is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. Al Qaeda continues to this date (2002) to participate in CIA covert operations in different parts of the World.[2] These `CIA-Osama links' do not belong to a bygone era, as suggested by the mainstream media.
The U.S. Congress has documented in detail, the links of Al Qaeda to agencies of the U.S. government during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo.[3] More recently in Macedonia, barely a few months before September 11, U.S. military advisers were mingling with Mujahideen mercenaries financed by Al Qaeda. Both groups were fighting under the auspices of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), within the same terrorist paramilitary formation.[4]
The CIA keeps track of its `intelligence assets'. Amply documented, Osama bin Laden's whereabouts were always known.[5] Al Qaeda is infiltrated by the CIA.[6] In other words, there were no `intelligence failures'! In the nature of a well-led intelligence operation, the `intelligence asset' operates (wittingly or unwittingly) with some degree of autonomy, in relation to its U.S. government sponsors, but ultimately it acts consistently, in the interests of Uncle Sam.
While individual FBI agents are often unaware of the CIA's role, the relationship between the CIA and Al Qaeda is known at the top levels of the FBI. Members of the Bush Administration and the U.S. Congress are fully cognizant of these links.
The foreknowledge issue focusing on `FBI lapses' is an obvious smokescreen. While the whistleblowers serve to underscore the weaknesses of the FBI, the role of successive U.S. administrations (since the presidency of Jimmy Carter) in support of the `Islamic Militant Base', is simply not mentioned. . . .
In a bitter irony, Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham, -- the men who hosted the mysterious September 11 breakfast meeting with the alleged `hijacker's high commander' (to use the FBI's expression), had been put in charge of the investigation and public hearings on so-called `intelligence failures'.

Former Top German Minister Rejects Official Story Of 911 Attacks, Tagesspiegel, 15 Jan 2002

I can state: the planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry.

Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz, told AFP that "the deathly precision" and "the magnitude of planning" behind the attacks of September 11 would have needed "years of planning."
Such a sophisticated operation, Werthebach said, would require the "fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a "loose group" of terrorists like the one allegedly led by Mohammed Atta while he studied in Hamburg.
Many people would have been involved in the planning of such an operation and Werthebach pointed to the absence of leaks as further indication that the attacks were "state organized actions."
Andreas von B'low served on the parliamentary commission which oversees the three branches of the German secret service while a member of the Bundestag (German parliament) from 1969 to 1994, and wrote a book titled Im Namen des Staates (In the Name of the State) on the criminal activities of secret services, including the CIA. . . .
The terrorists who actually commit the crimes are what von B'low calls "the working level," such as the 19 Arabs who allegedly hijacked the planes on September 11. "The working level is part of the deception," he said.
"Ninety-five percent of the work of the intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation," von B'low said, which is widely propagated in the mainstream media creating an accepted version of events. "Journalists don't even raise the simplest questions," he said adding, "those who differ are labeled as crazy."
Both Werthebach and von B'low said the lack of an open and official investigation, such as congressional hearings, into the events of September 11 was incomprehensible. . . .
Horst Ehmke, who coordinated the German secret services directly under German prime minister Willi Brandt in the 70s, predicted a similar terrorist attack in his novel, Torches of Heaven, published last year, in which Turkish terrorists crash hijacked planes into Berlin.
Although Ehmke had long expected "fundamentalist attacks," when he saw the televised images from September 11, he said it looked like a "Hollywood production."
"Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with 4 hijacked planes without the support of a secret service," Ehmke said, although he did not want to point to any particular agency. . . .

Mohammed Heikal is a brilliant Egyptian journalist-observer, and sometime Foreign Minister. On 10 October 2001, he said to the Guardian: "Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication."

Concerning the so-called USA `Patriot' Act, (carrying the almost preposterously gimmicky title: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act") passed into law on 26 October 2001, and read by virtually no one in Congress before it was passed, see the comprehensive listing of especially relevant text Sections of the law, with numerous articles providing essential analysis at http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/USAPA.html. Also incorporated in this listing is the 2003 draft of "Patriot II", formally titled the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" which was leaked to the Center for Public Integrity this past January.

Bill of Rights - This is a transcription of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. Called the "Bill of Rights", these amendments were ratified on December 15, 1791. Each amendment's title is linked to a set of detailed annotations presented on the Findlaw website.

Although Mark Davis identifies a specific sort of critic here with his group of three (American white men), many people come to mind with an equally rich sense of history and offer deeply perceptive and insightful critical analysis of our society, culture, and world including, but not limited to: David Korten, Mae-Wan Ho, Peter Dale Scott, William Blum, Wendell Berry, Michael Moore, Elisabet Sahtouris, Rosalie Bertell, Winona LaDuke, Arundhati Roy, Francis Boyle, Walden Bello, John Judge, and Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed to name but a few.

See Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961

. . . Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. . . .

See Bush v. Gore: A Resolution of Censure, The Supreme Court Five Censure Campaign, including A Draft Resolution of Congressional Censure Against United States Supreme Court Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas for Their Betrayal of the American People and the United States Constitution Displayed in the Decisions of Bush v. Gore (PDF format).